Thank the Egyptians for Birth Control

Contraception, porn, and mutual masturbation in ancient Egypt.

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Our ancient ancestors figured out this whole "sex" thing pretty quickly. However, it was the Egyptians, one of the first recorded civilizations, that laid the groundwork for a surprising amount of modern sexuality. For a culture that is best known for the pyramids and mummification, arguably their greatest contributions have been swept under the rug of historical oversight: contraceptives, pregnancy tests, and early porn magazines were all Egyptian inventions. Giant stone tombs are great and all, but you can't put your penis in a pyramid. (Security at Gaza is surprisingly swift to react.)

The oldest profession also appears in ancient Egyptian society, albeit in a modified form. (It's worth noting this isn't the earliest known mention of prostitution. It appeared first in Sumerian documents and the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi.) Egyptian prostitutes were more like musicians or dancers of sorts, as they were considered high-society and possibly even a part of revered religious ceremonies. They adorned themselves with gems, decorated their bodies with tattoos, and walked around nude. Scientists, please get time-travel functioning and accessible to the average person as soon as possible. I need it for ... research purposes.

There's a fallacy that Egyptians had no taboo against incest, which stems primarily from translation issues. The Egyptian equivalent for terms like "brother" and "mother" could actually refer to many different relationships, including ones that were not blood-related. "Sister" could refer to wives, lovers, aunts or nieces, so some of those translations get a little dicey. The royal family, however, had some pretty common incestuous relationships. For Egyptians, royal blood was on the female side of the family. For a man to be pharaoh, he would have to marry a princess, and in most of these cases that princess was his sister, so it's like the most awkward prom imaginable except forever.

The Egyptians are also credited for what could be the first pornographic magazine. Known as the Turin Erotic Papyrus, the periodical features a few satirical cartoons as well as explicit illustrations of a couple engaged in intense coitus, with the woman letting the man know: "contain your pleasure; your penis is within me." Everyone take note, this is a much sexier and diplomatic way of yelling, "don't come, you idiot!" at your partner. The magazine predates the Kama Sutra by several hundred years, and yet the two lovers are able to get into some pretty crazy positions, one of which resembles a wheelbarrow, and another (as best as I can tell) some kind of weird, triangular mushroom. Thanks for the addition to my sexual bucket list, Egyptians.

These guys also had an incredibly accurate way to test for pregnancy. Women who thought they might be pregnant would sow both wheat and oats near their home, and then spend the next week urinating on each. If the wheat grew, the baby would be male, and if the oats grew, the child would be a girl. If neither grew, the woman was not pregnant. Researchers tested this process out in 1956 and found it to be accurate 70 percent of the time. If you think it's tense sitting in a bathroom for three minutes waiting for a stick to turn a certain color, try hanging out for a week waiting for crops to grow while you pee outside all the time.

If you were trying to avoid pregnancy altogether, the Egyptians had some methods of contraception. They were apparently effective enough, but there's a reason they're no longer used today. Several barrier methods included using a mixture of acacia, dates, and honey or sour milk all up in your vagina. Oral birth control was also an option in the form of plant extracts that were essentially poisons. These all sound like great alternatives to birth control if you don't have health insurance, but I strongly insist that no one go filling their vagina with sour milk.

So far, this has all been pretty normal stuff, but if you want to get a sense of the Egyptian's attitude towards sex, you don't have to look much further than the myths tied to the gods of their religion. I can't stress enough that these get weird. You can't read these and still be the same person afterwards. You've been warned. Egyptian mythology credits some weird-ass mutual masturbation for the birth of some of the first gods. Ra j/o'd onto a goddess and cranked out his two kids, Shu and Tefnut. Meanwhile, you've got deity Horus and his uncle Set trying to trick each other into eating the other one's semen because I DON'T KNOW WHY. Hapi was a transsexual god and Min was this god that was always walking around with a boner and my brain is broken.

Egyptians were some pretty sexually deviant forward thinkers, but they had nothing on the Greeks and Romans. Get ready to lose your mind in next week's history of sex.

This is part two of a series breaking down sex throughout history. See part one here.